PalArch's Journal of Archaeology of Northwest Europe

Connoly, J. & M. Lake. 2006. Geographical Information Systems in Archaeology. – Cambridge Manuals in Archaeology. Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom

T. Vereenooghe — 2020-11-30

Geographical Information Systems (GIS) have been described as “the most powerful technological tool to be applied in archaeology since the invention of radiocarbon dating” (Westcott & Brandon, 2000: 135), but also as “a technology without intellectual vigour, overly dependent on simple presuppositions about the importance of spatial patterns in a dehumanized artificial space” (cf. Pickles, 1999: 50–52). James Connoly (Trent University, Canada) and Mark Lake (University College London) both have several years’ experience of working with GIS and teaching GIS to archaeology students. In their new book ‘Geographical Information Systems in Archaeology’ (in the ‘Cambridge Manuals in Archaeology’ series), they adopted an approach that is both practical and rigorous. The manual focuses on the kinds of problems that are routinely faced by archaeological users of GIS.

Although the authors do not envisage many readers methodically working their way through the manual from start to finish, they have tried to maintain a logical progression such that topics are introduced in roughly the order that they might be encountered in the course of developing and using an archaeological GIS. The authors first introduce some theoretical issues and provide an overview of the ‘first principles’ of GIS: the software and hardware requirements, geodetic and cartographic principles and GIS data models. As the archaeological user is – in general – not an expert in cartography or computer graphics, this first chapter is extremely useful. How do the geographical coordinates we daily use in our archaeological work relate to the position on the Earth’s surface? This is explained in an in–depth description of map projections systems, coordinate transformations and grid systems. The chapter concludes with a good overview of raster and vector data structures and their inherent (dis)advantages. Read more...

Halsted, J. 2005. Bronze Age Settlements in the Welsh Marshes. – Oxford, Archaeopress (BAR British Series 384)

P.F.B. Jongste — 2020-11-30

In precisely 100 pages (including an appendix with calibrated radiocarbon dates as oxcall-graphics), Halsted deals with settlements during the Bronze Age in a region that rightfully deserves closer attention: the Welsh Marshes. The publication is composed of an introduction with major themes related to the Bronze Age in the British Isles (chapter 1), a short outline of the physical environment of the area (chapter 2), three chapters on the Early, Middle and Late Bronze Age in this region (chapter 3-5) and the conclusions (chapter 6). The study does not contain a complete description of all known sites as the main objective is to look at settlement patterns and dynamics on a broad scale. It is therefore that the number of figures (only 22) is rather limited and mostly concerned with the distribution of archaeological sites and finds plotted on the geomorphological, geological or altitude maps of the different research areas. Also, very simple bar charts are depicted showing the numbers of metal objects during the three Bronze Age periods, as well as some overviews of radiocarbon dates.

The bar charts sometimes consume much space (e.g. figure 17 and 18). A minor, but annoying problem with some figures is that the text is not filled out properly (figure 2 and 20). The author may consider leaving out the lines in figure 20 and using an outline or box for the toponymes instead (cf. figure 6) or using numbers that are explained in a box below. For the sake of uniformity a north arrow should have been used in figure 3, 9, 16, 21 and if possible north arrows should be in the left top corner for carthographic reasons. There has been much freedom of choice in that respect. Read more...

Goodman, P.J. 2007. The Roman city and its periphery. From Rome to Gaul. – London/New York, Routledge

H. van Enckevort — 2020-11-30

I n this book the author explores the sparsely-investigated edges of a Roman city in order to acquire insight into the nature of the society which produced it. “A city’s periphery can be taken to mean any occupation on the fringes of a city which is neither fully urban nor fully rural in character” (p. 1). In written sources this area is described as suburbanus, extra urbem, extra moenia, extra murum and proast(e)ion. Chapter 2 shows that the contexts of these terms in an empire-wide setting reveal much about the urban periphery in Roman thought. In legal and literary texts and visual images the urban periphery is seen as an ambiguous zone between urban and rural, a zone of exclusion, a place for military activity, and a formal zone of transition. The ideas of ‘the urban’ and ‘the periurban’ presented by the Roman elite were absorbed by the provincial elites. The periurban identity was subjective and questionable, in several cases the border between urban and periurban was clearly physical, marked by walls, rivers, cemeteries, or by the changing orientation of the major roads when they entered the orthogonal grid. This makes it easier to investigate the archaeological evidence for periurban development outside the urban centre (chapter 3). The boundary between the periurban and the rural is more difficult to identify, especially in the case when parts of the suburbium were separated by open land. In general we can place the urban at one end of a continuous settlement hierarchy and the rural at the other end. The existence of the periurban is confirmed by archaeological evidence, especially the occupation that was physically bounded with the urban. Read more...

An Annotated Bibliography of the Piltdown Man Forgery, 1953-2005

T.H. Turrittin — 2020-11-30

Piltdown Man is the most notorious case of scientific forgery in the history of British archaeology and palaeoanthropology. Although the period from its introduction in 1912 until the exposure of the forgery in 1953 has been well-studied, the literature written after 1953 has received no such treatment. It is the purpose of this bibliography to place this growing body of literature in a descriptive context to aid researchers who are interested in the history of science and how we write about it. The scope of this bibliography is of predominantly English publications from 1953 to 2005, drawn from academic journals, books, newspapers, magazines, broadcast media and a selection of World Wide Web pages. A separate section has been included to give a general overview of the debates over who might have perpetrated the forgery.